NEW BEDFORD — New Bedford native David Barboza won two Pulitzer Prizes Monday for work done as the Shanghai bureau chief of The New York Times.

Barboza won the prestigious journalism award in the international reporting category for his work exposing political corruption "in the face of heavy pressure from Chinese officials." He was also included in a New York Times staff Pulitzer for explanatory reporting for a series of articles that explored business practices by Apple and other technology companies in both China and the United States.

Barboza, 47, is one of eight sons of Anthony Barboza, a well-known former Fuller Brush salesman in the city and first-generation Cape Verdean-American.

Attempts to reach David Barboza were unsuccessful Tuesday, but Barboza's youngest brother, Craigh, said their father raised the four youngest boys by himself after the children's mother died.

Craigh, who is himself a journalist and now teaches at New York University, said he and Barboza fell in love with journalism as 8- and 12-year-old boys in the 1970s New Bedford.

"We were really inspired by all the sports publications out at the time and so we set up a little sports magazine in our basement" on Court Street in the West End, Craigh said.

The two brothers sold issues of the magazine for quarters around their neighborhood.

"David wrote all the articles and I was his little assistant, but it really was the beginning of our careers in journalism," he said.

After attending a two-year junior college in Pennsylvania, Craigh said David went on to graduate from Boston University, where he was editor of the school newspaper, the Daily Free Press. After writing a story about Martin Luther King Jr.'s academic papers for the school paper, he was offered an internship at The New York Times, where he has worked ever since.

Craigh called his brother's work "inspirational not just because he won this prize but overall."

"He was never a straight-A student or anything," Craigh said. "He was just an average student, but the amount of work he put in and continues to put in got him to where he is today."

David Barboza became Shanghai bureau chief in 2004. In January 2013, the New York Times reported that Chinese hackers had infiltrated the newspaper's computer systems and targeted Barboza's emails related to his articles about government corruption. The report said the hackers appeared to be looking for names of people who provided Barboza with information. The Chinese government also blocked access to the New York Times' website on the days Barboza's articles were published.

"We were concerned because we primarily communicate with him through email," Craigh said. "But it spoke to the great journalism he was working on, that he was exposing so much corruption in the country."

Craigh said he often told his brother that his work was going to win the prize.

"I kept telling him 'This is your year,'" he said. "(David) wasn't concerned with that. He was just doing his job."